Healing Ceilings offers an artistic view for cancer patients

Artist Sue Scoggins, a painter involved in Healing Ceilings nonprofit, paints ceiling tiles that will be used in cancer treatment centers in her home studio in Emerald Isle recently.

Maria Sestito / The Daily News

By KATIE HANSEN Daily News Staff

Published: Sunday, January 5, 2014 at 06:21 PM.

Sue Scoggins’ ostrich is a prayer.

A prayer of healing. A prayer for laughter. A prayer to forget about your troubles even for a second.

The Emerald Isle painter is just one of many artists donating her time and resources to an organization called Healing Ceilings, which recruits artists to paint ceiling tiles which are then installed in adult cancer treatment centers.

“It’s kind of like a ministry for me,” Scoggins said of her art.

Scoggins likes to “paint happy,” with boisterous, Technicolor characters such as ostriches and puppies, flowers and landscapes in vibrant hues.

“Honestly … this is going to be a way for me to pray for whoever looks at this tile,” she said as she painted a rambunctious-looking ostrich on a tile. “And my prayer is that it will give them a little bit of happiness and joy, because I understand the stress of being in a life-threatening illness.”

A prayer of healing. A prayer for laughter. A prayer to forget about your troubles even for a second.

The Emerald Isle painter is just one of many artists donating her time and resources to an organization called Healing Ceilings, which recruits artists to paint ceiling tiles which are then installed in adult cancer treatment centers.

“It’s kind of like a ministry for me,” Scoggins said of her art.

Scoggins likes to “paint happy,” with boisterous, Technicolor characters such as ostriches and puppies, flowers and landscapes in vibrant hues.

“Honestly … this is going to be a way for me to pray for whoever looks at this tile,” she said as she painted a rambunctious-looking ostrich on a tile. “And my prayer is that it will give them a little bit of happiness and joy, because I understand the stress of being in a life-threatening illness.”

Scoggins’ husband Jerry currently lives in a nursing home where he is battling Alzheimer’s. She said because of her experience with the disease, she empathizes with the cancer patients for whom she paints the tiles.

“If these things can make people laugh and smile and forget their illness even if just for a second or two then that’s a good thing,” said Scoggins who believes laughter truly is the best medicine.

Healing Ceilings Founder and President Amy Jo Edwards has a similar attitude.

“My philosophy is when the going gets tough, the tough gets silly,” she said.

Edwards recently started the non-profit as a way of trying to break up the monotony and dread of oncology treatments for people battling cancer.

Edwards was inspired by both her husband, an artist who went through his second time battling cancer this spring, and a friend who had painted the ceiling tiles in her own hospital room when she was ill.

As her husband went in for treatment, Edwards brought in super hero stickers and donuts to others receiving treatments, and got her husband Hawaiian t-shirts to wear.

“(It’s) brutal just looking left and right and everyone’s fighting for their lives,” she said.

After researching the science of art and its healing effects, Edwards said the evidence showed art can calm patients, lower their heart rates, and require them to need less pain medication.

Edwards focuses strictly on adult cancer treatment because she said that’s where her heart is. Right now, tiles go up in treatment and exam rooms, but one day she wants to have them in inpatient rooms as well.

“I will not stop until every room in every cancer treatment center in the state has a healing ceiling,” she said.

Her ultimate dream is for Healing Ceilings to spread across the United States.

Healing Ceilings is incorporated as a non-profit in North Carolina, and Edwards is in the process of filing as a 501(c)(3) with the federal government.

Edwards said many artists she knows through her husband, who is now cancer free, have told her, ‘I can’t fix cancer, but I’m a great artist.’

Edwards currently has more than 100 artists who have helped paint or are painting more than 400 ceiling tiles — what she calls love medicine — since June, and more than 200 have been installed in oncology centers across the state.

Edwards even has artists out-of-state in Tennessee and Florida helping with the cause.

However, she said her largest concentrations of artists are in Raleigh and the Crystal Coast.

“The Crystal Coast has been amazing, a hotbed of artists here,” Edwards said.

Edwards recruited two groups of artists in the area this summer to begin painting for Healing Ceilings.

Ann Boyer LePere, a portrait artist who lives in Peletier, said her group received its first box of tiles in August, and she handed them out to artists mainly from her church at Cape Carteret Baptist Church.

LePere, who has taken up the organizing efforts around west Carteret County, said she originally had eight artists participating and shortly after had a waiting list of people who wanted to participate.

LePere said artists are required to use acrylic paints because they are non-toxic, does not put off fumes, dries quickly, and has vibrant colors. The specific tiles are also hospital-approved.

For LePere, she said participating in the project is a “real labor of love,” because she too has been touched by cancer — her mother died at the age of 38 from breast cancer.

“So it’s very personal,” LePere said. “I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

She said most of her group’s images have focused on nautical themes. She herself painted clothes hanging on a clothesline and another with a NASCAR theme to appeal to male patients.

“There are no limits,” she said, as long as they are positive and cheerful.

The Western Carteret group now has 11 artists participating, and they come from varied backgrounds, according to LePere — one is an active duty Marine, another is a retired elementary school art teacher and she is a portrait painter. Scoggins is a part of LePere’s group.

Two new boxes of tiles — with 16 tiles in a box — were delivered in November as a donation from the Seaside Arts Council out of Swansboro.

Kathy Kelly, co-president of the Seaside Arts Council, and Debbie Peel, the council’s secretary, both paint with LePere’s group.

“Debbie and I both had the most wonderful experience painting a tile for such a worthy cause that I suggested to Debbie that we ask the Seaside Arts Council to donate a box of tiles as Ann told me they were having trouble getting more tiles,” Kelly said, adding that the board ended up voting unanimously to donate two boxes rather than one.

Kelly said the artists feel honored to be able to bring peace and smiles to chemo patients.

“Healing comes from the arts,” she said.

LePere said the BluSail Gallery & Framing, Artists’ School & Pottery Studio in Morehead City is also organizing another group of artists for the cause.

Lynn Golitz, who owns BluSail Gallery with her husband Mark, said they got started helping Healing Ceilings this summer around July when Edwards approached them.

“We paint everything from eclectic to beach scenes, but most specifically happy things because these folks when they’re getting treatments they’re lying flat on their backs looking up at a blank ceiling,” Golitz said. “It was an opportunity for us to give them something happy and hopeful.”

Golitz said she has approximately six artists helping her paint tiles — artists who show and teach at the gallery — as well as students from her classes, including children.

“I wanted the kids to learn at an early age how their art can affect people,” Golitz said. That is why she had them paint individual tiles as well as group tiles.

Golitz said one particularly moving moment was when one of her 8-year-old students asked if her tile could be placed in the hospital where her grandfather was receiving his chemotherapy treatments.

Golitz said they have now painted approximately 50 tiles, and she “absolutely” plans to keep on going.

“I’m a huge proponent of art therapy,” she said, noting that she has seen the health benefits of art.

Edwards said the work the artists are doing in the area has humbled her.

“The artists of the Crystal Coast have been just on fire painting for Healing Ceilings,” she said.

Want to help?

To donate Make checks out to Healing Ceilings, located at 1912 McCarthy Street in Raleigh 27608. The Healing Ceilings website, www.healingceilings.com will be active in January

$50 buys a box of 16 2’x2’ tiles at Lowe’s Home Improvement.

Those who want to paint can contact Healing Ceilings Founder Amy Jo Edwards at amyedwards@nc.rr.com or by contacting her on the Healing Ceilings Facebook Page.